Diablita

The first time I visited this place was for a coworker's birthday last year, right after they opened.

As you can see from the photos, it is pretty dimly lit on the inside for happy hours. This was a "hang out with coworkers" type event again for me, and it turned out to be way better than the coworker birthday event was. The first time I was here the food was too greasy and the service was really slow.

However, this time around everything was pretty good. I ordered the red sangria (delicious and whoa did it pack a punch!) and the chicken fajitas. I don't know what Dave got because he placed his order after I'd had one glass of sangria so my memory retention wasn't all that great.

Anyway, the only complaint I have about the food is not enough tortillas. You never get enough with fajitas no matter where you go, just like when you order mooshu anything at any Chinese restaurant. They had you this wonderful pile of fillings and then like, 3 pancakes.

So, am I supposed to fill-to-spilling these tortillas? How do they eat these in their native country? I'm confused.

Anyway, the chicken was grilled, wonderfully seasoned and moist. The toppings were fab. House sour cream (I think it had cilantro in it) pico de gallo, rice, spicy black beans, lettuce. YUM.

I give it 4 noms. They didn't skimp on the booze, and my food was hot, fresh and not greasy!

Dave's 2Cents:

As always, I am a big fan of the exposed brick and rustic flooring and timbers. I was surprised that with just 2 people working the front they were able to take care of a group of 40 of us.

I had nachos and salsa as an app, and some tasty beef sandwich on a flat bread. (No idea what is was called, sorry.)

It was overall a nice place inside, unfortunately, it resides on the border of Little Italy and a ghetto. (quite literally, the next block is projects).

Max's Empanadas

I have to admit that I was hesitant to try this place out at first. It cropped out virtually from nowhere after an Italian Deli shut down last year. Then I thought "Empanadas? In Little Italy? That's crazy talk" Crazy delicious!

Dear Max, whomever had the idea to pass out menus Friday evening should get a raise. That's what brought us in there. Something so simple. Dave brought home the menu and since I'd already had my heart set on seeing The Switch at Landmark that evening (and avoiding the Movie-on-the-Wall crowd to boot) I suggested we just make it a dinner and a movie night.

Now, the empanadas are pre-made then baked when you order them so they're gooey-hot. This means that if you have an aversion to olives (like Dave) then you will stand there and pout and not order anything until your dinner date shoves a forkful of cheese covered tender falling apart chicken in your mouth and you give in and order a whole plate of food for yourself. At least, that's how it happened for us.

I ordered the two empanada combo which gave me one chicken and one ham and cheese empanada and a side salad. The presentation of the food was gorgeous. The empanadas were golden brown, soft and warm. The salad was beautiful. So many colors and so fresh. I totally cleaned my plate. Both empanadas came with cheese and olives stuffed in with the ham and chicken. The flavors really worked so well together and everything was so good. They didn't taste premade (I can only assume these are all prepped like the night before then baked when you order them. They do sell frozen ones, but I doubt any that land on your plate in the restaurant have ever been frozen).

Dave ended up getting the chicken empanada with the black bean hummus. The hummus came with sliced fresh veggies and warm pita bread for dipping. I personally hate all hummus as a general rule, but Dave totally loved it. I was biased, but the pita bread and veggies were totally fresh and awesome. Totally.

This is a little row-home style restaurant so you can't have too many people looking into the glass case or milling about by the wine or cash register. There will definitely be some crowding if you find yourself in any of those places (Oh, did we mention this place sells booze? It does.) but there is ample seating and it has a funky contemporary feel to it. There's art for sale lining the walls and other non-for-sale art that ties the decor together nicely.

To appease the Italian crowd this place also offers paninis and wine. Oh, and also, it's cheap. Two people can leave incredibly full for not a lot of cash. Does it get any more Italian than that?

4 noms

Dave's 2Cents:

To be honest, after looking at the menu, nothing really jumped out at me. Not saying its bad, I just wasn't in the mood for this style of food, or so i thought.

I sat down and didn't order anything, watching my wife eat. She then, after some arm twisting, made me try some of her Empanada. Needless to say before the food got in my stomach, I was up at the counter ordering my own plate full.

 

I went with 1 Emp and hummus. I got the pulled chicken Emp' and black bean hummus.

Along side of the plate was hot and toasty flat bread, carrots and zucchinni. The best part was that it was lightly seasoned with salt and oregano.

Great food. Great prices. Great atmosphere! Thanks Max!

Blue Agave

At some point we were going to have to review a Mexican restaurant. We'd been avoiding it because of my newly diagnosed stomach issues which included such orders from the doctors as "no spicy foods" and "for the love of GOD no spicy foods" and "You should probably stay away from spicy foods" and then there was "Oh yeah, and no tomato, lime, lemon or orange. Also, no spicy foods"

So it had sorta ruled out a lot of my favorite Mexican dishes like...anything Mexican. We had a Groupon for Blue Agave Restaurante and Tequileria which is next to Dangerously Delicious Pies so we thought we'd have dinner there, carefully, and then hit up DDP for dessert.

I scoured the menu to locate all of the dishes that I knew wouldn't be good for me and immediately avoided them. This narrowed my selection to pretty much any vegetarian dish, the dos Burros and the enchiladas. I opted for the enchiladas and Dave got dos Burros. We also got a sampler of salsa and some homemade tortilla chips (which the first round is free, any additional you pay for).

The enchiladas came on a platter with three, stuffed with cheese, shredded chicken and covered in the red enchilada sauce topped with cheese, a side of rice and black beans. It was fantastic. These were probably the best enchiladas I've ever had. I ate one whole one and then Dave at my last two (they were probably just a notch above the spice level I'm allowed to have so to avoid a stomach ache, I gave him my final two in exchange for the rest of his chicken burrito). The rice was perfect the beans were perfect, it was great. There was a slight hint of something sweet like cinnamon or something in the tortillas that really added an excellent flavor to the whole dish.

Dave's entree was two burritos, one steak and the other chicken, stuff with beans, rice, tomatoes. They were huge. Absolutely gigantic and unbelievably good. The meat wasn't dry or overcooked, the tortilla soft and warm. Best burrito I've ever had.

The chips and salsa was also incredible. Everything was so fresh and tasted like it was just prepared. I only wish they had told us what kinds of salsa we were eating (one was all green, one clearly regular salsa and one a dark red/brown color and almost completely liquid)

4 Noms.

This place was great. They have an excellent happy hour on Tuesdays where you get 2 apps for $20. This seems like it would be a great place to meet friends or go to after work.

Talara

Another Groupon, another review. Today we visited Talara, a little tapas/bar place right by Little Italy. We opted to go during a non-busy time of day (read: when we woke up from our nap at 3 p.m. 45 minutes before we had to pick up the foster kittens from their surgery) in hopes of quick service.

I walk by this place pretty frequently as it is near to both work and home, and I have never seen it busy. I noticed that this particular groupon had a little over 1,200 purchases so I do hope that changes. However, before we get to the reviewing of the food part, I do have to say one thing: their website is goddamn annoying. Dear Talara, go easy on the flash, mmkay? You kinda froze up my computation machine and I don't even run into that problem toggling between facebook and hulu Wednesday nights when I'm desperately trying to catch up with Amy and the gang on Secret Life of the American Teenager (we all have demons, go with me on this one). So, in conclusion, your website is confusing, too flashy, and it needs to be stopped. The end.

Now, the food/restaurant experience itself.

It took us a few minutes to decide on what to order, despite it being their lunch menu and pretty concise. Finally we settled on the Pork Empanadas for an appetizer, and Dave got the Bento box lunch which came with a salad, Asian salmon tar-tare, tempura shrimp over grilled pineapple, and two small slices of tres leches cake, I went with the green chile burger which came with queso blanco, bacon, green chile salsa and bbq sauce and a side of fries.

It took almost 15 minutes for our app to hit our table and before we were even done eating it our entrees were there, so I think there's a bit of a timing problem in the kitchen (which happened to be located about a foot to our left). The empanadas were pretty good. The pork wasn't dry at all, the pastry outside was crispy and then soft. It came drizzled with a sauce that tasted like a spicy mayo.

As for my burger, it was in interesting combo of flavors, definitely had that "southwestern" flavor going for it. It was cooked properly, and the fries were delicious. I must warn you this burger has a tiny kick to it, so I was unable to eat much thanks to my stomach. What I did eat was pretty good.

I tried Dave's salad and his shrimp, avoiding his salmon tartare at all costs, then giving his cake a try (I hate cake as a general rule. If you put cake in front of me and I have more than one or two bites, it's damn good cake). His salad was very crisp, the shrimp had a good flavor and I really liked the grilled pineapple. The cake was "eh". It wasn't dry and it was drizzled with a coconutty creamy sauce (which I liked) but it's cake.

The restaurant itself is really lovely. It's covered in all these latin-looking paintings, and the decor is funky and cool. I really like that they do the cooking basically right in front of you (sometimes I wonder what really does go on in kitchens, then I remember that I'd rather not know) but here they're right there and you can watch them make your food.

As far as the service goes, when we walked in we had to wait for someone to come up to the stand to seat us, watching the cooks shout and gesture to someone in the background. Our waitress was really really nice but I think that because it was so slow, it was easy to forget about us. She brought our food as soon as it was ready and our glasses didn't go empty but it did take her awhile to settle the bill. The last time I was in there I waited about 15 minutes to have my glass refilled then by the time she refilled it, we had to go back to work. So the service was better than it was that time.

I do think this place is more suited for a happy hour or business lunch place. I didn't get to try any of their alcohol drinks but I have heard good things. The food is pretty tasty but I just don't see this as a go-out-to-dinner kind of place. This is more of a meet-your-group-there-for-cocktails place. Its relatively inexpensive (at least their lunch menu is, I'm not sure about their dinner menu) and you do get enough food for what you pay for.

Overall, I give it 3 noms.


Dave's 2 Cents:
I really don't have anything to good or bad to say about this place. Nothing was bad, but for the location, something should have had stuck out as great.